The U.S. Supreme Court should reject the idea of a secret law or
directive that purports to regulate public behavior yet cannot be
disclosed, several public interest groups argued yesterday.

The groups filed amicus curiae briefs in support of a petition by
John Gilmore, who challenged a government requirement that he
produce official identification in order to board an airplane and
was told that he could not see the underlying policy document
because it is "sensitive security information."

The government says that Mr. Gilmore had adequate notice of the ID
requirement without inspecting the written policy.

But "The laws of the United States do not permit the Executive
Branch to govern public conduct through secret laws," wrote Marcia
Hofmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Court
should therefore agree to review the Gilmore matter. The FAS
Project on Government Secrecy signed on to the EFF brief.

Other amicus briefs were filed by the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The latest briefs, and other background on the case, can be found
here:

Openness in government is a prerequisite to democratic self-rule and
is the best available antidote to official corruption.

Yet greater transparency, particularly on the international level,
"is not an unmitigated good," argues Kristin M. Lord in a new,
somewhat contrarian book.

"In all likelihood, the trend toward greater transparency will be at
once positive and pernicious," she writes, particularly since some
disputes are based on real conflicts of interest and are not simple
misunderstandings that could be resolved through greater disclosure.

"More information about the military capabilities of other states may
show vulnerability and encourage aggression by the strong against
the weak. Greater transparency can highlight hostility and fuel
vicious cycles of belligerent words and deeds.... Transparency
sometimes can make conflicts worse."

The author illustrates her thesis with case studies of the role of
information in the unfolding of the Rwanda genocide, and of
information policy in Singapore's relatively open yet rather
authoritarian society. She seeks to distinguish between the means
of openness and the hoped-for ends that are implicitly believed to
follow from them, sometimes without justification.

For more information, including the first chapter of the book, see
"The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency" by Kristin M. Lord,
State University of New York Press, 2006:

The ill effects of too much transparency are still a rather
hypothetical problem, since national and international efforts to
control disclosure of information persist and in some cases are
growing.

In another recent book, author Alasdair Roberts identifies several
factors that are inhibiting transparency, including the
privatization of certain categories of government information, the
increasing influence of international organizations with restrictive
information policies, and the growing international collaboration of
security agencies.

See "Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age" by
Alasdair Roberts, Cambridge University Press, 2006:

The conduct of military operations in urban areas is the subject of a
new Army doctrinal manual.

"Of all the environments in which to conduct operations, the urban
environment confronts Army commanders with a combination of
difficulties rarely found elsewhere [due to its] intricate
topography and high population density."

The hazards and threats posed by the urban environment, and the
spectrum of potential responses to mitigate or exploit them, are
considered at length in the 315-page unclassified manual.

See "Urban Operations," U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-06, 26 October
2006 (a large 14 MB PDF file):

"For those who believe in transparent government and fact-driven
legislation, the power shift in the U.S. Congress represents a
unique opportunity to open up one important Congressional
institution -- the Congressional Research Service -- and bring back
another one -- the Office of Technology Assessment -- twelve years
after it was disbanded," suggests Christian Beckner in Homeland
Security Watch:

The Army Science Board has drastically reduced public disclosure of
its unclassified advisory studies, Inside the Army reported. And by
doing so, it may have undermined the impact of its own work. See
"Citing Security, Army Tightens Reins On Science Board Research" by
Fawzia Sheikh, Inside the Army, November 13:

The unprecedented prosecution of two former pro-Israel lobbyists who
are charged with improperly receiving and disseminating classified
information has unpleasant implications for reporters who cover
national security, among others. The case was reviewed by civil
libertarian Nat Hentoff in "Bush Revives Espionage Act," Village
Voice, November 10:

"The mainstream news media is too fond of articles in which it is
said some flavor of demonical terror menace can be put together from
cookbooks found on the Internet," George Smith blasts in his Dick
Destiny blog and in the UK's The Register.

The Main Directorate of Special Programs (Russian acronym: GUSP) is a
somewhat mysterious Russian security organization that was
established as one of the various successors to the former KGB.

"The directorate's specialists have a great deal of experience in
building fortified structures and tunnels and know how to handle
explosives," according to an article in Moskovskiy Komsomolets (16
September 1999).

"Moreover, the GUSP is the president's very own special service and
is accountable only to the head of state."

In a neat bit of detective work, the Open Source Center (OSC) of the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence noticed that new
details of GUSP's internal structure could be gleaned from official
badges sold by commercial vendors of military paraphernalia.

"Russian commercial websites specializing in the sale of military
insignia provided identifying information for a number of military
units belonging to the Special Facilities Service (SSO) of the Main
Directorate for Special Programs of the Russian Federation President
(GUSP)," the Open Source Center reported this week.

"[This] is in most instances the only available public reference for
these units and their affiliation with the Special Facilities
Service," the OSC said.

In another neat bit of work, Allen Thomson retrieved images of those
telltale military insignia and combined them with other published
material to produce "A Sourcebook on the Russian Federation Main
Directorate of Special Programs (GUSP)" which may be found here: